The first of two summaries covering articles in Resuscitation in 2013 covering areas such as prevention of cardiac arrest, basic life support, defibrillation and cardiac arrest in special circumstances.

Mechanical CPR devices are the latest in pre-hospital technology. Common sense would say they’re better at CPR than manual CPR. The LINC trial says otherwise. The CIRC trial notes they result in statistically equivalent survival to hospital discharge…but it has it’s weaknesses.